Do Essential Oils Penetrate Skin?

While Sheppard-Hanger says that the “safest and most pleasant method of delivery of essential oils is in the form of massage,” she presents a lengthy argument to support the theory that essential oils cannot actually penetrate skin.  According to her, when oil molecules are found inside the body following a cutaneous application, they did not pass through the “skin barrier” but entered through the nostrils by inhalation.  This idea dates back more than 200 years when the skin was erroneously thought to be impermeable to virtually everything.  We now know it is more like a sieve, blocking some molecules and accepting others – especially the small lipid molecules of essential oils. 

There is good research to prove that percutaneous passage of oils does occur.  For example, the books by Buckle, Clarke, Tisserand, and Price, reviewed in this chapter, present considerable research in support of transdermal absorption of essential oils.  Carvone, a ketone found in spearmint, dill, or caraway oils has been detected on the breath and measured in the blood within 10 minutes of applications to the skin and is later found in the urine.  Linalol and linalyl acetate from lavender oil, eugenol from clove or basil, and 1,8 cineole from eucalyptus have been found in the blood in 20-40 minutes and in the urine within an hour or two of skin contact.  According to Price, a little essential oil on the skin will eventually “pervade every cell in the body,” crossing even the blood-brain barrier.

Sheppard-Hanger has apparently never seen, done, nor received a raindrop massage.  In the raindrop technique, numerous pure oils are applied neat to the skin where they observably penetrate into the body and can administer healing throughout.   Many testify that they have placed oils on the soles of their feet and tasted them on their tongues shortly thereafter.  This is often cited as self-verifiable evidence that oils do penetrate skin and travel through the body.  In Sheppard-Hanger’s rebuttal of this phenomena, she claims that when people taste oils in their mouths that have been applied to their feet, they have simply inhaled the vapors rising in the air from their feet.  Despite a great deal of research to the contrary, she does not believe essential oil molecules actually travel through the body upon skin contact.  We respectfully disagree.

Nevertheless, there is much to be gained from her well-organized text, which took her years to compile, and has clearly been a work of love.

Reference:  The Chemistry of Essential Oils Made Simple: God’s Love Manifest in Molecules by David Stewart, Ph.D., D.N.M. Registered Aromatherapist.